Frankfurt city hall piano brawl hits wrong note

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A would-be mayor of Frankfurt disgraced himself by throwing a high-ranking city official over a piano he was using to disrupt a prestigious award ceremony in the city hall.

The final winner of the Fraspa award for civil engagement was just about to be announced when suddenly a high-ranking city official “went flying over the piano,” as Bild daily described it on Thursday, hitting his head against the instrument and the floor.

The scuffle broke out in the Kaisersaal of Frankfurt's Römer city hall, when three-time mayoral candidate Carl-Maria Schulte, 60, began disturbing proceedings with loud cat calls, thumping the keys of a piano, the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper wrote on Thursday.

When the city's long-serving head of protocol Karlheinz Voß tried to calm Schulte and get him to leave, the latter lashed out and launched him over the piano, spokesman for the city Thomas Scheben - who wasn't himself present on the night – told the paper.

“It's not the first time that someone has misbehaved at an award ceremony,” said Scheben, “but it is the first time anyone's got violent.”

Scheben said Voß was lucky to walk away with only scratches and bruises after the attack. Sixty-year-old Schulte, who also works as an artist under the name Carlo di Fabio, was banned from entering the city hall after the incident on June 20.

The ex-policeman, who has failed in a total of three bids to become Frankfurt's mayor, has a history of making a nuisance of himself at public events – either by grabbing the microphone or trying to mount the podium uninvited.

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